Whales change their song every year. So do I. We all do. We search the expanses for the cosmic rhythm that makes us alive while we are still just that, alive. We are aware of the inevitable. We will one day lose those we are closest to and who keep our hearts pounding,  Those who keep us happy and alive. I haven't been so aware of mortality since I was a teenager. I'm older, I'm more decrepit and I feel a pressure that's been building.
I've never been happier. Growing older is beautiful, the greatest of blessings. I am collecting rather than rejecting. Children, teens, it may be awful now but it gets better. You begin to realize who you are and that others have little say in who you choose to be. They may also have profound influence. Be aware of the consequences of what you choose to do. In the words of Maurice Sendak.."Live your life, live your life, live your life."
Amen. We only have this one.

This Life

I work a whole lot. I'd work more if more work was available. I am a server. Everyone tells me that I can do more with my life, I am happy and complacent. I get to meet so many people in my line of work. I don't make much money but I gain wealth.
Tell me your story. Now it's part of mine.
Smile at me, the day became brighter.
I used to swim. I remember touching my fingers and toes to the starting line, waiting for the gunshot to extend and delve and surface again.
I am now waiting. I am gathering. I am listening. When I hear that gunshot, you will have so many stories to hear. I will tell them to you the best I can.

This strange, sad world.

Getting older is rather interesting. You remember the naive declarations of youth while trying to balance the responsible realizations of mortality as an older individual. When I say older....I mean any age over...."hey...someone else will pay for it.." Sometimes this does not occur for a long. long. long while.
I'm working this whole month through. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth....not because I'm working so much, but because I'm not working toward anything substantial at the moment. I'm turning thirty, (cliche heart attack moment) and it's scary.There are so many static moments. The moments where things just don't change and the moments where true intuition is over-wrought by worrisome concerns.
We all live and we all die, both our blessing and our curse. So what do we do while we're here? Buddha says chill out...Jesus says give....My mom says get it together. I understand my mom best. But my mom and dad are superheroes. They have done more than I could ever understand. They have worked harder than anyone I know. I hope this generation can be more like the good folks, those who created a better world for us...our children...our future. Those left with the burden to hold our dreams.
Some of them are us, some of them are still growing, I hope we hold on.

For Richer or for Poorer

     I am not religious. To be honest, most of the people I know aren't very religious. We all have our doubts and we all have some faith. I like that people question our origins, others' principles and each other's actions. I also love so many passages from the Bible, Torah and Koran. I don't want to treat these as works of fictions because of the magnitude so many have placed on these books. To me, all books are sacred. To me, all faith is a miracle.
     I can't get over some of the most beautiful things about religion and I hate that politics are gorging themselves creating factions and hatred between different faiths. Anyone that has actually read any scripture, as long as they have some talent of observation and/or deduction, realize that every scripture of a major religion tells us to love. They tell us destruction is devilish. I don't understand how there are so many who are willing to turn to fear and violence the minute an election year, a ballot, a book comes around where supposedly we must choose or we are no longer the chosen.
     One of the most amazing moments of my life happened when I should have been too young to understand its meaning. My mother, sisters, brother and I had come home from church. I hated church. Roman Catholics...always mourning, except for a few select holidays. My dad would make these amazing omelettes (still one of the hardest words for me to spell other than diarrhea), and other delicious foods while we were off 'worshiping', I may have combined memories, but those omelettes and my father's beliefs have never been able to separate themselves from each other.
     When I was young (perhaps on some Sunday with my face full of brunch) I asked my dad if he believed in God. He told me that if anyone said absolutely there is a God, they might be liars. He also said that if anyone ever said there was no God, they were probably liars too. This taught me always never to say you know something if what you mean to say is that you believe in something. Honestly, I think it's a whole lot more amazing to believe than to know.
     With that said....I could continue with some pretty corny things. Like...I know I'll die but I believe I will live etc. As much as I wish I had fruitful and life changing quips, I think I still have more questions than statements. So let me ask you, person so unfortunate as to be reading this...what do you believe in and what do you know? Which do you prefer?

Merry Christmas Recession! (reposted from FB)

Dear Santa,
I've been pretty good this year and was wondering if you could grant my Christmas wish! See, there was once this guy named Jesus and he was super cool. He was the kinda guy who would sit with the nerds at lunch time in high school cause no one else would. People loved him, but others hated him. They were afraid of his altruism and shining divinity. Kinda like Ghandi but with better hair...Sorry, getting sidetracked! Anyway, this guy Jesus was awesome and people have written and read about him for centuries.


But today I was very much disturbed. I was waiting for a friend to pick me up from Market East (a train station/mall) when a young man started to attack his family! He was screaming about not having enough money for what the very skinny but beautiful lady wanted to buy her kids (who were with her, one by her side, one slung upon her breasts) and that she was a stupid insert swear word.
 But today I was very much disturbed.


Where was Jesus in any of this? The guy was pulled away by security and the lady went back home. Safe for the moment I guess. I know everyone has their attitudinal shortcomings, and some to the extent that they become abusive. But help me Santa, can you please give this world a good will roofie that you mix in with the acid rain? Like maybe all the world could start having positive feelings towards each other and stop acting like pack rats guarding their goods...?

So really that's all I want for the early celebration of the birth of super cool Jesus. I want families to be together, for their bread/protein winners to feel up to the task of at least minimally providing for their families. I know there are a lot of liberals out there that want to be given hand outs left and right and our not a real American but actually a Kenyan Muslim president is trying to act like Robin Hood or something, but if you, Santa, give us the stuff we want, it's okay! Cause you are Santa! You are much better equipped at foreign policy than some dude who went to Harvard. So rev up St. Nick! Help our destitute and depressed, Lord knows Congress won't.

I got laid off. I play a lot of online Scrabble now. What else do you want? A copyright for the next great thing? I'll do my best, but for now....I'm collecting.
    Here's a dream I had the other night. It was sweet.
The world was a little bit different.  People weren't afraid of each other. No stock markets or trading existed. We held familial obligations and that was it. Our parents and children mattered more than our retirement savings. We hosted holiday parties rather than obsess over trading options. We held each other's hand rather than have a hand in each other's holdings. Hmm. I wish.
But here we are now. We obsess. We digress. We believe the greatest income will come in the future, bred from the past. Mostly those I know and grew up with have nothing to gain from our ancestors' death. But I am afraid that the majority of wealth derives from nepotism..Not just familial but obligational. Let's break free of this needy habitat and make our own decisions.

Fireworks.

     I'm from the country. Now I live in the city. It's weird. I'm a country girl. If need be, I'll fight a bear at a moments notice but I cannot deal with crowds. The city is filled with crowds. I won't fight a crowd. They scare me. Spiders, ticks, hicks, trees, fleas, rising rivers and falling economies will not be able to scare me away. However, a mob trying to attain the newest assassin video game will have me running for my life.  Why are we this way?
      Turmoil, strife, crime, grime, terror, fear, gunshots, hopelessness, jail time, neglect, lovelessness. paralysis, poverty, racism, what do you expect from us, from them, from us? I've been held up at gun point, knife point and, oddly enough, pipe point. And did I ever back down? Oh, hell yeah! You don't argue with a 45. I wish I didn't know what a 45 was.
      I wish I didn't know what most of what I just said was. I wish I was naive. I wish I was a dumbass. But I'm smarter now because of what I've been exposed to. I'm a country girl who moved to the city. And if I know anything I know this: We can do so much better for each other. It's easy to explain away the reasons why poverty exists, but try sitting in the bar next to someone who just lost their job and explain it to them. Do you have the guts and ability to explain to them why they can't feed their kids? Maybe it's cause they're drinking. But why are they drinking?
     Try to explain why their lesbian daughter can't get married because despite this man's South Philly upbringing that taught him hate for fags and dykes, for Godsakes he loves his daughter and she loves her girlfriend and they can't get married and that's hideous. His daughter cannot be married because of hate. Love cannot be because of hate. It doesn't make sense.
      There's a whole lot of things we don't talk about. Us middle-class. We have to start talking. Otherwise we will disintegrate. We will lose everything our parents and grandparents have taught us. We will lose everything our grandparents died for. And yes, yes indeed, with the most sorrow and bravery I can muster from my heart, both my grandfathers died for something bigger than bigotry. They died for liberty, but the most important thing is....they lived for love. I only really knew one of them, but I know in my heart what they both lived for, and it was for the people they loved.
      So here we are, and we don't know what to do. At least I don't. I don't want to be a part of a bandwagon that I wouldn't run face first into. I don't feel that there's anything out there for me right now. I don't feel that there's anyone who voices a similar opinion or walks the same path as me, there's no one I feel I can truly believe in. So let's talk. Let's share and be honest with each other, else, I don't know what to do.